Month: January 2020

Lupita on Big Stage

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In the wake of Saturday’s extremely robust Virtuosos show, last night’s Lupita Nyong’o interview with Dave Karger seemed a little bit flat. Okay, not flat but rote. Fine but ho-hummish.

The Montecito Award recipient appeared last night, per SBIFF, in concert with the Martin Luther King holiday, and to re-hash her celebrated performance as “Red” in Jordan Peele‘s Us. Over-celebrated in my view, and you’ll notice that Lupita fervor died out after a brief December surge among critics groups. It began with her winning the Best Actress award from the NYFCC.

Lupita is a gifted, beautiful, grade-A actress, but it’s going to be hard to find another role as good as Patsey in 12 Years A Slave. It’s unfortunate that better roles don’t seem to be out there. Or aren’t being offered to her.

HE commentary on Nyongo’s NYFCC win for Best Actress: “Good as she was in Peele’s interesting if underwhelming horror flick, Lupita basically delivered an intelligent, first-rate, Jamie Lee Curtis-level scream-queen performance with a side order of raspy-voiced predator doppleganger.”

Hillary Trashes Bernie in Hulu Docuseries

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A 1.21 Lacey Rose piece in The Hollywood Reporter passes along two bombshell quotes from Nanette Burstein‘s Hillary, a four-part Hulu docuseries that will debut at Sundance 2020 and stream in March. One conveys Clinton’s negative view of Bernie Sanders, and another passes along President Obama‘s opinion of The Beast.

Hillary tells the cameras that Sanders “was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”

In a THR interview Clinton is asked is the Bernie assessment still holds. “Yes, it does,” she says.

THR: “If he gets the nomination, will you endorse and campaign for him?” Clinton: “I’m not going to go there yet. We’re still in a very vigorous primary season. I will say, however, that it’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women.

“I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it. And I don’t think we want to go down that road again where you campaign by insult and attack and maybe you try to get some distance from it, but you either don’t know what your campaign and supporters are doing or you’re just giving them a wink and you want them to go after Kamala [Harris] or after Elizabeth [Warren]. I think that that’s a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions.”

In the doc Clinton vp running mate Tim Kaine is heard confiding that President Obama called the night before a debate and said, “Tim, remember, this is no time to be a purist…you’ve got to keep a fascist out of the White House.”

I can think of only one other second-hand Obama quote about Trump’s venality — “He’s nothing but a bullshitter.” It appeared in a May 2017 People article.

De Niro, Driver, Hanks, Sandler, LaBeouf, Foxx

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For an hour-long session, this sure flies by. Great gab, fascinating character studies, etc. How many weeks ago was this thing taped? Hanks shaved his beard over a month ago.

For the 47th time, I hated Uncut Gems but deeply admired Adam Sandler‘s career-altering performance as a manic gambling junkie. I was one of the early-birds who insisted it was award-worthy and the National Board of Review (among others) agreed, but industry voters didn’t buy in. A member of the Academy’s acting branch recently told the N.Y. Post that Sandler is “emerging as a truly great actor, but then he does cheesy Netflix comedies that are really dumb…Unfortunately, actors become brands [and] Sandler’s brand doesn’t scream ‘Oscar.'”

Another actor said, “If Sandler has another great film, he’ll be nominated.”

The 21st Century Robert De Niro is a whole different being than he was in the late ’70s and early ’80s, which is when I began to study him first-hand in terms of parties and press encounters. Now he’s open, candid and even loquacious…playing the game. Back then he was some kind of holy monk oddball who was too special and sensitive to talk to anyone except close colleagues.

Shia LaBeouf on playing his asshole dad: “I think if you can empathize with the biggest villain in your life and scrape some of these shadows, it makes you lighter and free-er. When you lead with lightness and love, you can get to the heavy easier. Anger and the rough shit is very easy. It’s the other stuff that feels quite difficult.” HE: Honey Boy is an honest, respectable effort, but I didn’t feel this empathize-with-dad element at all. From the very beginning I was muttering to myself “okay, here we go…we’re stuck with this boorish dickhead for the whole film.”

Side observation: The collar on the white shirt that LaBeouf is wearing looks awful. If you must wear a collar buy Italian-made shirts with smallish, narrow or button-down collars. Or better yet banded collars.

Pique, Frayed Nerves, Exhaustion

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Early this afternoon most of Hollywood Elsewhere’s uploaded still images (dating back to August ’04) disappeared.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s ISP is WP Engine of Austin. The vast majority of HE’s images are stored in a cloud maintained by Amazon Web Services (AWS). WP Engine stores the images on a hard drive for about ten days, and then migrates them to the AWS cloud. I know the bucket name but not the account #. Not my fault.

As of earlier today WP Engine’s access to these images was denied, and therefore to the world. The protocol access data has changed due to whatever, and WP Engine, appallingly, told me they have no way of reaching out to AWS to inquire or remedy.

It’s presumably a payment issue, but I don’t have the AWS account # that would allow me to shake hands with their system and forward whatever payment may be required.

The guy who set all of this up back in ’17, Dominic Eardley of Lexington, Kentucky, wouldn’t reply to my messages (text, email, phone). Plus AWS doesn’t have an easy-access chat or help line, certainly without my having an account #.

Update: After several hours Dominic <u>finally</u> replied, and then an AWS customer service rep reached out.

The situation will eventually be solved but this is what’s been occupying me and darkening my soul for the last five or six hours.

“Green Book” Revenge Vote?

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Remember that Jeff Sneider tweet from last July that predicted some kind of anti-Green Book vote would manifest in 2020 Oscar voting? Sneider was wrong about Queen & Slim and Just Mercy but he was also saying that an anti-older-white-guy pushback vote would emerge down the road.

I’m mentioning this because a friend said this morning that there’s a feeling among industry fence-sitters that the industry has to somehow make up for giving Green Book the Best Picture award last year. Somehow that “wrong” has to be balanced out with a counter-vote. Call it the Green Book guilt-pushback factor. Or, if you will, the “Bob Strauss will forgive you if you vote to somehow make up for that calamitous error.”

Is this real or just grapevine bullshit?

Klobuchar & Warren?

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I’d vote for either Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar against Trump in the general. Along with Bernie or Pete or Typewriter Joe. Any of them would be a huge improvement. But where’s the polling data that says Warren or Klobuchar would be a formidable Trump opponents? This is my concern.

“Three Kings” Redux

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I hadn’t seen David O. Russell‘s Three Kings in roughly eight or nine years. Caught the late ’99 theatrical opening, and then an HD streaming version a few years ago on Amazon or Vudu. I’ve never been a huge fan. It pushes too hard. Too much yelling, shooting, confusion and chaos during the first 45 minutes. Yes, it eventually calms down. I respect the humanitarian arc during the last 45 to 50 minutes.

All to say that I watched it again yesterday afternoon inside Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre, and then listened to Russell and SBIFF director Roger Durling talk it over for 45 or 50 minutes. Unfortunately the amplified sound was a little too boomy and bassy. I could understand portions of the discussion, but not all of it. If you don’t believe me, listen to the sound on the video I took. Russell: “Boom-didda-bamala-dah…betabud…budda-waddah-maddah-fig…biddy,” etc.

I naturally wanted to ask Russell about Amsterdam, the Disney/Fox film that he’s reportedly intending to direct with Christian Bale in the lead. Margot Robbie, Jamie Foxx and Angelina Jolie are allegedly being considered for supporting roles.

Alas, Durling didn’t open things up for audience questions, and I couldn’t find either of them after the event ended.

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SAG “Parasite” Freakout

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Tell me I’m dreaming. Tell me I’ll wake up soon. And if not, stab me with a #2 pencil. Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite has won the SAG Best Ensemble Award, or the guild’s equivalent of the Best Picture award. As Beetlejuice would say, “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”

Which means the heat has been slightly turned down on 1917, which last night won the top prize (Daryl F. Zanuck award) from the Producer’s Guild, and there’s a better-than-decent chance that Parasite, a finely crafted, widely respected but far from masterful social-inequity drama hampered by crude writing during the second half, might win the Best Picture Oscar. Maybe. Possibly. You tell me.

The Academy can’t give it the Best International Feature Oscar and the Best Picture Oscar…no! They can’t do this!

Parasite lead actor Song Kang-ho said tonight that “the [film’s] story is about coexistence and how we can all live together…to be honored with a best ensemble, it occurs to me maybe we haven’t created such a bad movie.”

I’m sorry but that’s total bullshit. Parasite is about the greatly suffering underclass and the absolute indifference to their situation on the part of the super wealthy. The story is about how a poor family (dad, mom, son, daughter) manages to con a rich family into giving them all cushy jobs, and it ends with the bloody slaughter of three people (two poor, one rich) during a backyard children’s party. Has Song Kang-ho lost his mind?

SAG has also saluted the same acting contenders that everyone else has gone for…Joaquin Phoenix, Renee Zellweger, Brad Pitt, Laura Dern.

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Nostalgia For Complex Adult Thrillers

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Clark: “You like coffee?” Ryan: “Yeah, I like coffee.” Clark: “Try the Lindo brand.”

I really miss this kind of bucks-up, perfectly written, reality-based, exquisitely performed thriller. A little more than a quarter-century old. Not aimed at pot-bellied fantasy dweebs but 25-and-older types who’d been to college for a year or two and would actually pay to see movies like this.

The splendor of 52 year-old Harrison Ford, still riding that peak superstar surge that began with Witness in ’85, playing the best Jack Ryan ever. Masterful direction by Phillip Noyce, produced by Mace Neufeld. Costarring Willem Dafoe, James Earl Jones, Joaquim de Almeida, Miguel Sandoval, Henry Czerny, Harris Yulin, Donald Moffat, etc.

Flush budget, finely polished, beautifully scored by the late James Horner. Written by John Milius, Donald E. Stewart and Steven Zaillian. As good as this sort of thing ever got.

This kind of big-studio product is dead and gone, of course. The corporations lost interest in films of this sort…what, 15 years ago? 20? Gone with the fucking wind.

“We Should All Live So Long…”

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I’ve watched Arthur Hiller and Paddy Chayefsky‘s The Hospital seven or eight times, but until this morning I’d never read portions of Chayefsky’s actual script. The pre-dialogue intro hums with sardonic perspective and architectural exactitude. In a word, brilliant.

I’m imagining what it must have been like to read it cold in ’70, before filming. This kind of writing has always been rare; it’s almost nonexistent today.

“I Don’t Know This Lev Parnas…”

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Scott Dworkin tweet — 1/16/20, 4:43 pm: “Lev Parnas said he was going to release videos and photos of him with Trump every time Trump says he doesn’t know him. Trump just [did that]. Lev followed through with a video of Trump introducing him to a Ukrainian businessman last December. Awesome.”

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